December 20, 2005

Scott Squires, longtime ILM VFX Supervisor and creator of Commotion, has 2 blogs and a podcast available; see esp, Effects Corner Podcast, "Insights to Visual Effects for Motion Pictures and Television. How it's done in Hollywood and how you can do it yourself." (from Prolost).

AE for Shake is a full package of macros for Shake to mimic the 124 effects and 30 blend modes of After Effects within Shake. For now up to 124 effects and 30 blend modes are supported. The User Interface is exactly the same in After Effects and Shake which allows a very fast transition between the two packages.

Interested in FinalTouch for professional color grading on the desktop? I don't have enough inspiration to track the discussions at the telecine internet group:

'The tig (telecine internet group) is a collection of people worldwide with interests in color correction or grading images originating in cameras using film, video, or raw data as record media. The tig was originally formed in 1994 for the telecine community ("telecine" in this case meaning "video film") as a mailing list with associated webpages.'

Silhouette Paint, a high dynamic range raster paint system, has been released. Silhouette Paint, an add-on to Silhouette Roto, offers non-destructive motion stabilized paint for image restoration, dust busting, and wire and rig removal. The plug-in version is "the first raster paint option for Final Cut Pro and After Effects"...Well except for AE's old Vector Paint filter.

October 17, 2005

O'Reilly's Mac DevCenter has an article on MacOS X Quartz by Matthew Russell. Here's an excerpt:

Quartz is the heart and soul of Mac OS X's graphics layer, which directly supports the defining features of the Aqua desktop experience. Quartz is largely based upon Adobe's PDF specification, but it has roots tracing all the way back to PostScript. The two defining components of Quartz are Quartz Compositor and Quartz 2D. Quartz Compositor is OS X's powerful window server, and Quartz 2D is the two-dimensional drawing engine that's often referred to as Core Graphics. Although Quartz 2D is accessible through the Application Services umbrella framework, Tiger introduced Quartz Composer: an alternative way to explore the power of Quartz through a powerful visual programming environment.

August 30, 2005

Sounds like fun, but requires DirectX for Managed Code, part of the DirectX August 2005 SDK from Microsoft:

World Wind lets you zoom from satellite altitude into any place on Earth. Leveraging Landsat satellite imagery and Shuttle Radar Topography Mission data, World Wind lets you experience Earth terrain in visually rich 3D, just as if you were really there. Virtually visit any place in the world. Look across the Andes, into the Grand Canyon, over the Alps, or along the African Sahara.

August 26, 2005

Researchers have finally found evidence for what good Catholic boys have known all along – erotic images make you go blind. The effect is temporary and lasts just a moment, but the research has added to road-safety campaigners’ calls to ban sexy billboard-advertising near busy roads, in the hope of preventing accidents.

The new study by US psychologists found that people shown erotic or gory images frequently fail to process images they see immediately afterwards. And the researchers say some personality types appear to be affected more than others by the phenomenon, known as “emotion-induced blindness”.

August 25, 2005

On August 19, 2005, the journal Cognition posted on line a 19,000-word article by Tecumseh Fitch, Marc Hauser and Noam Chomsky, entitled "The evolution of the language faculty: Clarifications and implications" (free version here), referencing an additional 6,000-word appendix "The Minimalist Program". This is the third turn in a (so far) four-turn, three-year debate with Steve Pinker and Ray Jackendoff.

A friend at work yesterday told me about iDive. He gave me a tour of it at lunch and I downloaded the trial and captured a few tapes.

What I was blown away by was how good it is at logging a tape based on scene detection. It will also create thumbnails (at specified intervals) or capture the video to the DV codec or an RT codec. It has keywording. And most importantly it exports FCP XML so you can very easily add clips to FCP. For 69 dollars, I think it's pretty it's sweet. It's essentially iPhoto/Adobe Bridge for digital video.

Question on list:Is there a way to do Cmd-opt-F (fit to comp) in a script? People like to work at 720x540 square pixels, but need to final output D1 aspect ratio 720x486.

Answer:Lloyd Alvarez's brainchild script was a real collaborative effort, and is now detailed at AEnhancers.com. There's also a new version of the script that puts in a user-definable effect (like Broadcast Colors or Broadcast Spec, but it could be any Effect).

August 15, 2005

Core Image apps are gaining traction. The latest version of Edo apparently has support for playback of Quartz Compositions as clips.

Also, Noise Industries' Reactor plug-ins are based on Core Image. Factory Floor lets you make your own AVX plug-ins based on any Core Image Unit in just a few clicks. Reactor plug-ins can also be based on Quartz Compositions.

Toolfarm has developed a "plug-in locator" to search filters by use, developer, plug-in name and keyword. So far searches, samples, tutorials, and reviews are limited, but it's a nice start on a more ambitious project we had kicked around.

Google Print is still in beta, and scans have been suspended, but it's still cool.

If you look up "After Effects" you get access, at least partially if they've been restricted, to several nice AE books. If you click on the cover picture of a book, you can click through the pages, click "More results from this book," or use "Search within this book."

Among the new graphics technologies in OSX/Tiger is “Quartz Composer” in the /DeveloperTools/Applications/Graphics Tools folder at the root of your hard drive. There seems to be some amazing stuff brewing that we can adjust and save as screensavers and movies. For support and inspiration, check out the Quartz Composer Programming Guide at Apple, and the Quartz Compositions forum.

And, via heyblog:"By the way, the “Core Image Funhouse” also in the Applications>Graphics Tools folder is a neat example application, too. On my Powerbook, most of the Photoshop-like effects it can demo (like Gaussian blurs) are wicked fast.".

July 11, 2005

Besides slo-mo, word from Motion trickster Mark Spencer is that Compressor 2 also has improved standards conversion, for NTSC and PAL for example. Rumor has it that results are good if slow. Previously the best solution in FCP was to use the Natress StandardsConversion filter.

July 8, 2005

Pierre Jasmin of RE:Vision Effects recently posted some advice on working with 3D Studio Max; here's a rewrite:

Some AE users AE has limted support of Discreet's RPF channels in 3D Studio Max renders. AE only supports 8 bits/channel extraction with the provided plug-in set, and supports only RLA (11 of the 16 RPF channels). 3DMax has a Combustion workspace export and RPF support is much better in Combustion 4 than previous versions. But there is another option if you want to stay with AE: the Max2AE plugin from Boomer Labs.

MAX2AE bridges the gap between MAX and After Effects, matching all aspects and parameters of Max cameras, lights, and objects. More from Boomer Labs: "MAX2AE also incorporates the ability to create 'helper planes' in MAX which represent your AE layer or comp. These 'helpers' provide a highly accurate way to envision the AE layer relevant to your MAX scene. These 'helpers' can be animated just like any other MAX object, then used to output keyframe data to AE layers for a perfect match! Even allowing them to be rendered from MAX for the purpose of generating track mattes for object/AE layer occlusion!"

July 6, 2005

Check out the new book on AE, Adobe After Effects 6.5 Studio Techniques by Mark Christiansen, the only real match for Trish and Chris Meyer's books. It even offering chapters on float and eLin. This book attempts to dispel the often unsubstantial myths about AE and visual effects. A 2004 survey found more than 250 Hollywood features had used AE, including many shots done at ILM and affiliates.

Visual effects pipelines can be demanding and break tools that seem robust, but AE holds up under strains of even IMAX production. It's not that you won't need other apps, like SynthEyes for 3D tracking, but if you're doing a mix of motion graphics and effects it makes sense to stay in AE..

June 26, 2005

Probably not as fun as a VES-VFX Festival or seeing Martha at BDA, but "The Color-Space Conundrum" is a nice long 2 part treatment of the history of digital-intermediate workflow from American Cinematographer magazine..

There's a sightseeing group, Google Sightseeing, and there's even a site powered by Powered by craigslistand Google Maps. What Microsoft and Yahoo are up to?Flickr, Flickr, Flickr, where art thou tags going?

Philip K. Dick was a science fiction author whose writing has been getting the Hollywood treatment (Blade Runner, Total Recall, Screamers, Minority Report, Paycheck, and in 2006 A Scanner Darkly) since his death in 1982.

an After Effect Portal is curated by Rich Young, who previously tracked After Effects resources at the aging AE Portal (now lost in the latest shuffle), which started in 1997 as a class guide and later specialized in plug-ins. An almost complete one-page overview of pre-CS5 AE plug-ins was AE Portal plug-in summary.

Please contact me at @aerich or aefilter at yahoo with AE-related news on filters, tutorials, and events. Retweets are easy! Note that pure product promotion isn't the goal of this blog, and that free or very interesting stuff is will garner broader interest.

January 9, 2005

You probably know about adamwilt.com, a "video geek's website" and home of the DV FAQ, tidbits, and ruminations on Panasonic's 24p DV cameras. Be sure to catch Adam's column in DV mag, especially the recent one on HD Numerology.

Another fun site is HD For Indies is a "High Definition Video for Independent Filmmakers, A How To Guide for indies on the cheap." It covers HD and HDV, with links to basic and advanced information.

January 7, 2005

Stu Maschwitz, "filmmaker and accidental technologist," has a blog. Stu is a master of After Effects and helped create The Orphanage, Magic Bullet, and eLin. He also worked at ILM and was involved in aspects of products by Red Giant Software.

Discreet is bringing in Culley Bunker, a visual effects artist who will break down a variety of music video projects and explain his process for solving some tough visual effects challenges. Culley is a freelance visual effects artist currently working at Base2. Recent work incudes music videos including Gwen Stefani "What you waiting for", Black eyed peas "Lets get it started", Finger eleven "One Thing", FUSE #1 Video of the year, and the films The Aviator, Spiderman2, Minority Report, and Scooby Doo.

Matt Silverman breaking down some of his commercial work done in After Effects. In addition, he'll be talking a bit about using After Effects and Discreet's Flame together.

There may be one or two more presenters, so keep your eye open for emails Jim Tierney of Digital Anarchy.

at the Mezzanine Club444 Jessie St
(near Powell BART, off 5th South of Market)
San Francisco CA

The guests include Brian Rothschild talking about the John Lennon Educational Tour Bus, a recording studio on wheels; Philip Hodgetts doing multicam FCP; glorious 24p footage from Christopher Jenkins' "el Fandi, A Day in the Life of a Matador" and local Iron Chef of Filmmaking, Jin Joo, talking about Cinemasports (Walter Murch is a
huge fan of Cinemasports). There will also be a sneak preview of the upcoming DVD of the Walter Murch preso at SFCutters.

Seating is first come first serve. Food is free and a cash bar will be available from 6:00PM.

January 4, 2005

The quick and dirty way to convert between PAL and NTSC in AE is posted at Toolfarm.

There are a number of ways to improve upon AE scaling, field interpretation, and frame blending--if you have 3rd party AE plug-ins. Algolith, which sells weekly licenses, has a Format Convert pack for interlacing, scaling, anti-aliasing, noise reduction, and framerate conversion. Their categories indicate places where you could improve conversions if you had Magic Bullet Suite (artifacts, retiming and fields), Fields Kit, Retimer, DA Resizer, and Genarts filters, among others.

If you want to do this in Final Cut, you could use the Graeme Nattress Standards Conversion FCP filter.

Test:

Farhad Manjoo discusses The Great Tech War Of 2012 in which Apple, Facebook, Google, and Amazon battle for the future of the innovation economy. He doesn't mention the potential of Siri, a new UI technology in the iPhone 4S, though some consider Why Siri Is a Google Killer. Engadget recently compared Siri to its competition in an iPhone review: